[ID: a threaded needle sits through a hole of a big red button.]
Let’s start off with something easy: how to sew a button!
You don’t need to throw out a garment just because a button fell off. Sewing on a button is an easy fix that only takes a few minutes. You can also use buttons to decorate garments that need sprucing up.
Where to find buttons:
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[ID: two white buttons sewn onto a garment’s label.]
If you still have the button that fell off your item, you can just reuse that one. A lot of garments also have spare buttons sewn into the clothing tag, so check if your item has this.
If you don’t have any spare buttons, you can always buy some. You could buy new buttons from the craft store, but an even better option is to buy second-hand buttons.
A lot of thrift stores have a sewing corner, including buttons, and you’d be surprised what you can find on Facebook Marketplace or in Freecycle groups. Second-hand buttons are usually cheaper than new ones. This way, you’ll also save an existing resource from being thrown away.
You can also reuse buttons from items you don’t wear any more, or look around thrift stores for items with pretty buttons. Keep the rest of the garment as spare fabric for future projects.
Infographic on how to sew on a flat button (source):
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[ID: Instructions on how to sew on a flat button by RealMenRealStyle.com.]
You can also use buttons in a decorative way to add some new life to garments you’ve grown bored of. Note that this will often render your button incompatible with button holes, so don’t do this to functional buttons.
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(Image source) [ID: twelve buttons sewn onto a pink piece of fabric in a decorative way.]
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(Image source) [ID: various decorative ways to sew on a button.]
Have fun and be creative! Remember, it’s your item and you get to choose what to do with it. And feel free to show me your creations!
I was just thinking I needed to get around to replacing a button on my vest!
May not win points for style on close inspection but I did it!
And I only shanked myself once 😅
[ID: a before and after picture of a button that’s been sewn back onto a purple garment.]
You did it! Congrats!
For people who like to wear the same kind of clothes all the time: any time something wears out enough to be put in the scrap bin, make sure you remove AND SAVE all the buttons first. Not only will you have extra buttons, but there’s a reasonable chance that you’ll have matching ones. (This works better for things like trousers which are all in the same colour or have metal buttons than for blouses or shirts with buttons that match the fabric colour.)
Also the form of estrogen they prescribed trans women in the 90s, Premarin, looked like this.
And lest there be any remaining doubt.. remember the blue pill? The pill Neo could have taken to forget the truth, bury his troubles and go back to living a normal life, without fearing a system that wanted to destroy him? The pill that was easy, perhaps cowardly according to some, but comfortable?
Here’s Prozac.
For a trans woman in the 90s, where the choice was be safe, suppress, cope, and pretend everything is still how it was, or embrace the danger, accept the truth, realize your full potential, and transition into a world that still thinks you’re a joke and would rather have you dead…. well. The metaphor is pretty fucking clear.
Y’all
Lana came out as a woman after Speed Racer in 2008, and Lily eight years later after the release of Jupiter Ascending (2016), so if you see original home copies of the Matrix (pre-2008), they are referred to as the WachowskiBrothers on it. It was a branding thing, like the Coen Brothers. That’s how they were called, because they were still presenting as male to the industry and the industry sold them as a creative unit.
I remember after Lana came out, the boxes switched to calling them just The Wachowskis, so I imagine now it’s the Wachowski Sisters.
So, yes, they’ve always been sisters, but if you didn’t know that, it’s not your fault. It’s been a long process and I’m glad they did it on their terms in their time.
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